


Tamed lightning

by madmogs



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Honestly I have no idea where this came from, Lobotomy, M/M, Recovery, but I am so sorry, hopeful ending though, hurt/slight comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:35:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24779992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madmogs/pseuds/madmogs
Summary: Zhao wonders if the boy remembers his old name. It's three years since he's been called anything but 'boy', three years since he lost an agni kai to his own father, and was sent to the lightning-tamers to have the rebellion burnt out of his brain.Zhao's had him ever since. He's perfectly, despicably docile. Left alone, he does nothing, just stays sitting or kneeling where you left him.  But when given orders, he'll do anything --anything-- you ask him to.
Relationships: Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Zhao/Zuko (Avatar), Zuko & Yugoda (Avatar)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 552





	Tamed lightning

**Author's Note:**

> Every so often the shadowy corners of my brain spring stuff like this on me and refuse to let me go until I've written it down. So I did. Whoops.
> 
> Check the tags before you read! Don't head into fic with the dead dove tag unless you're happy you're in a place where you can handle it!
> 
> Apart from the content warnings, let me also warn for the fact I wrote it all in one sitting, that I don't have a beta, and that I'm still rewatching the show so some of the characters are being reconstructed from vague 10-year-old memories of canon.

"Boy," Zhao says, "my boots."

The boy kneels at his feet, unlaces the boots and sets them aside. Then he stays kneeling, awaiting his next order. He doesn't look up.

"Look at me, boy."

There's not much to see. A pale, skinny face, uncut hair. The plain, coarse uniform of a powder monkey.  
One yellow eye blinded by the scar that covers half his face, the other the flat empty void of the lightning-tamed.

Zhao wonders if the boy remembers his old name. It's three years since he's been called anything but 'boy', three years since he lost an agni kai to his own father, and was sent to the lightning-tamers to have the rebellion burnt out of his brain.

Zhao's had him ever since. He's perfectly, despicably docile. Left alone, he does nothing, just stays sitting or kneeling where you left him. But when given orders, he'll do anything -- _anything_ \-- you ask him to.

"Boy, suck me off."

* * *

There is fire in the body, and in the brain. It's too small to feel, for all but the most accomplished lightning tamers, and too delicate to influence with any degree of reliability. But there's a place behind the eyes where the lightning is strongest in the rebellious and intransigent, and a lightning-tamer can break the the conduits between that spot and the rest of the mind. A good lightning-tamer can even do it without leaving their subject a drooling, unproductive wreck, most of the time.

The Fire Lord only has the best lightning-tamers.

* * *

Zhao is lucky enough to have a cushy job.

On paper he is 'searching for the Avatar'. The Avatar is gone and nobody gives a shit about him, except the kind of impotent idealists who want to be saved from their problems instead of fixing them themselves. But in the places where the weak talk of the Avatar, there are usually stronger men and women who are organising in the shadows. Those are Zhao's quarries, and he has an open purse from the Fire Lord to hunt them down.

He isn't expecting the Avatar to reappear, and his mission to change.

He's not happy about it. He takes it out on the boy, it seems fitting, given who the kid used to be, and he gets a kick out of seeing the tears running out of the dull yellow eyes when Zhao hurts him.

* * *

By the time he reaches the North Pole, he has an entire fleet to worry about. He's also growing tired of the boy, of having to tell him to eat and change his clothes and scrub his teeth.

"Infiltrate the city, boy," he says carelessly. It's an impossible task. Just as well, as there'd be nobody to give the boy further orders if he did make it into the city.

(Fire Lord, your useless son was lost in the action against the Northern Water Tribe. Too bad, so sad. You have my insincerest condolences.)

The boy's fire may be extinguished, but it hasn't taken his intellect (such as it was) with it. Given a simple objective he procures a tiny boat, and a set of suitable camouflage for ice, and a small knife in a sheath. Zhao looks him over, and briefly considers countermanding the order. But then Commander Jee, one of the more infuriating commanders he's been saddled with, requests yet another assinine clarification of a perfectly straightforward command and Zhao's patience comes to an end.

"Go," he says. The boy goes, to do something suicidally impossible with a rowboat and a knife.

Good riddance to a mediocre cocksucker.

* * *

The captured Fire Nation soldier is almost dead when they find him, but there is a battle to be fought so they dump him on Yugoda with orders to rouse him enough to be questioned.

He answers all their questions without a hint of resistance, except one. The only name he will give is 'boy' and he looks confused and distressed when they press him for another. But a youth with no mental filter who has apparently spent nights in the Admiral's stateroom is a goldmine, and only Yugoda looks increasingly horrified as questioning progresses. She can only be relieved that the Avatar and his young companions are absent.

* * *

The moon goes dark, the ocean rises up. The fleet is gone, save their one young spiritless soldier.

Yugoda visits him every day. She tells him to eat and wash and change his clothes, and wraps healing water around his head.

(The spirit injury is an old one, which are often beyond a healer's reach, but teenagers' minds and spirits are still building themselves up. With the support of some healing bending, perhaps the boy can build some morsel of spirit to replace that which died.)

(Yugoda has been alive a long time, much of it surrounded by men she is too well-mannered to call fools. She has long learned patience.)

* * *

After one week, the Avatar and his companions leave. It is a relief, probably, to all concerned.

* * *

After two weeks, the boy asks Yugoda what she is doing.

Two days later, he asks her why.

Those are the first times he has spoken without being spoken to.

* * *

After three weeks, an old man arrives alone and without weapons in a small boat.

"I am small and fat and harmless," everything about him says. It may even be true, but Yugoda doubts it.

Nonetheless, the stranger is not her problem. Yugoda puts him out of mind after Master Pakku vouches for him. The first flickerings of spirit in her young patient are bringing with them the first swells of long-stunted emotions, and he's taking more of her time than, really, she can spare.

* * *

The door opens, even though it's not the usual time for Yugoda to visit him.

The boy is seated on the floor, back to the wall and knees drawn up, on a rug because Yugoda insisted he not sit on bare ice, and she is the one who gives the orders now. He hears someone -- two someones -- walk in, and that is not usual. They stop. It takes a minute, maybe, for it to occur to him to lift his head and look, and another two to put a word to what -- who -- he is seeing.

"Uncle?" he whispers, and suddenly he is trapped in sturdy arms, face pressed against a smoke-and-jasmine scented beard. He closes his eyes and waits for the pain that usually follows touch.

" _Zuko_ ," Uncle says. The arms grow tighter, a hand runs over his hair. It hurts in a way that is somehow almost good. "Oh my poor nephew. What in Agni's name did they do to you?"


End file.
